


Disillusioned

by W01FS0NG



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mention of Lux Bonteri, No Beta We Die Like Clones, Onderon, Police Brutality, Protests, Rebellion against the Empire, Saw Gerrera/Original Female Character (if you squint), Stormtrooper brutality, Tatooine, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/W01FS0NG/pseuds/W01FS0NG
Summary: Kenobi encounters this Lethan Twi'lek on Tatooine and decides to help her.
Kudos: 2





	Disillusioned

There was this disillusioned young woman. How does Kenobi know she was disillusioned? Well, Kenobi was trying to get a speeder at a dealership in Mos Eisley. Anyway, this young, red Twi’lek woman drives up to the dealership wall and crashes through only to park her vehicle halfway through the rubble. Once she got out of the speeder, he could see this look in her eyes: distracted yet concerned. Her skin and head-tails were a light shade of Vermillion. She had a faded brown jacket, a white shirt, brown boots, and black pants.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered as she looked at the shattered glass that laid on her floating vehicle. Next, she turned her head towards the broken window and took a half-step back. “Oh, shit.” Once she noticed dealers walk up to her, she said, “I’m sorry.” Then she looked at the large speeder that just rolled up in the parking lot. “I-I’ll just leave this here.” In the next few seconds, she walked out of the open wall and into another speeder. This particular one had just been brought back from a test drive. The Twi’lek hopped in and drove it away. The young woman didn’t speed, mind you. She just rode at a speed that would be considered one you would use in a neighborhood. It was one of the strangest things Kenobi had so far encountered on Tatooine.

Long story short, he got a speeder. The former Jedi heading back out into the sands to go back into his make-shift home. On the road, he found the Twi again. Some humans were trying to steal her stuff. Just as Obi-wan was thinking of helping her, she waved her hand in front of their faces. Words were exchanged, thought the Jedi could not hear them. Next, the two humans walked away without any fuss. Kenobi knew what had happened instantly. The feeling of the Force was quite prominent. This Lethan Twi’lek had used a Jedi mind trick on them. The only problem was, he had no recollection of her ever being in the Order. Sure, there were Twi’lek, Master Aayla Secura being one of them. However, none were Lethan. Senator Orn Free Taa had one as an aide of his, but that was his extent of knowledge. 

Perhaps, she was like Anakin, undetected by the Order until a Jedi came here without the intention of searching for a Force-Sensitive. 

When she glanced in his direction, he looked away, opting to go home and meditate on this.

“Wait!” she called out. Against this man’s original thought, he didn’t press the accelerator. The Lethan Twi’lek jogged over to him. “Do you have any food?” Briefly, she glanced at the ground. “I’m afraid I ran out of credits.”

“What happened to your speeder?” He asked her. Truth be told, there was no large floating vehicle in sight.

She tilted her head slightly. “How would you know if I was at the dealership?”

“I was there when you… crashed your speeder into the walls then took a different one.”

“Oh, that first one was one that I  _ could _ trash. The second wasn’t for me, it was for a man whom I owed a speeder.” She had no Rylothian accent. He thought maybe she was raised here.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

She placed her hands on her hips. “Dia Torr. You?”

“Ben Kenobi. Hop in.” Once she climbed into the passenger seat, he began to drive off. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“No, not really. As I said, I’m broke. Do you?”

“We’re headed there now actually.”

  
  


While still on the way, Kenobi felt the need to state, “You seemed very… out of sorts at the dealership.”

“Did I? I hadn’t been thinking.” He sensed that something weighed heavily on her mind. The former Jedi didn’t know why his mouth moved on its own, but it did. “Where are you from?”

“Ryloth, but I’ve been all over. Before coming to Tatooine, I was in Onderon.” He could feel her distress at the very mention of the planet. Kenobi had some too but, hers felt much different. He wondered if she experienced some of the chaos that ensued over there. Empire propaganda played in the local Cantina about the riots.

“What were you doing on Onderon?”

“Just traveling.”

His lips pursed. She lied. Some strange feeling in the air didn’t make him want to press. “Are you… just traveling now?” He wondered if she knew how dangerous it was for Twi’lek here. Her species did make up most of the slaves on this planet. 

“You could say that,” she stated. Her head now faced the vast valley of rock and sand. That’s when he knew that she was on the run.

  
  


Kenobi parked the vehicle outside of his home. One could see the Western Dune Sea from this spot. Then again, there wasn’t much to see except sand and rocks in the Jundland Wastes. The house was a simple one-room hut. A cave sheltered various supplies underneath. A moisture vaporator stood next to the home.

————

The inside of the hut was cool. Dia was thankful for it. She hasn’t had a roof over her head since she got here. Something was off with the ginger-haired man she currently stayed with. There was this strange feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. 

Her mind drifted to the chaos that Onderon currently was. The Empire had taken it over, and Saw Gerrera’s men were probably still fighting. And it all started over people who just wanted to peacefully protest against the Empire.

  
  


_ There was a speech that was going to be given on the capitol building’s steps. The Republic was turning into the Empire, and Senator Bonteri was making a speech about it. Dia Torr and many others wanted to peacefully protest at a plaza near the steps. She and three others (all local Onderonians) even went to the government building so that she could get a permit to do so. The office would not comply.  _

_ Yet, the people had gathered anyway. They got there during the night. The speech would happen in two days. People were camping out. Most of them were in the same militia who fought against the Separatist Confederacy. They saw what Dia saw. The Empire was just another form of oppression. _

_ In the long hours of the early morning, Saw Gerrera made an appearance. Dia walked up to him, saying, “Saw, I’m glad you could make it.” _

_ “It was tricky getting here,” he admitted. “I may have picked up a few stormtroopers. They’ve been watching me.” His head inclined towards the Imperial speeders. “I don’t like them any more than you do. Hell, I might like them less.” The two of them met shortly after Onderon was freed from the Separatists. Dia is known among the resistance veterans as being ‘someone they would have liked to have with them during the uprising.’ A skilled fighter, intelligent, and doesn’t take people’s bullshit. _

_ Quietly, Dia surveyed the area. Those bikes were currently unattended. “Where are they now?” _

_ “Trying to find me,” he stated.  _

_ “I can fix that,” I muttered. I fast-walked over to the machinery. _

_ “Torr, what are you doing?!” Saw whisper-yelled. I didn’t answer him. _

_ Just as I was about to tamper with the bikes, someone shoved me into them. The cold feeling of cuffs touched my wrists. “You are under arrest,” a modulated voice told me. _

_ “What for?” I asked. _

_ “Attempting to tamper with Empire property.” Members of the crowd threw complaints at them. They were steadily getting louder. More and more people became speculators. _

_ “It’s alright, guys!” The Twi’lek tried to calm them down. The troopers dragged me down to the station house. _

_ Later that day, She heard at least five hundred voices shout, “Free Dia Torr! Free Dia Torr!” “Te galaxy is watching!” She felt their anger. She felt their frustration. The next thing that hit her was the other protest leader’s fears- _

“Dia?” asked Ben as he tried to gain my attention. The man held a plate of food in front of him.

I took it, saying, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He sat across the table from me with his plate of chow.

They let the silence pass between them as they ate.

_ By morning, she was let go from the stormtrooper’s custody. Since she hadn’t done anything to tamper with their equipment, they had no grounds to keep her there. The Twi’lek walked to the plaza to find that just about an eighth had been taken away. _

_ “What happened?” She asked the leaders as she walked up to them. They held fallen faces. _

_ “When we marched to get you,” Saw paused. “They stepped outside the precinct with weapons. Marya knew that a lot of people were going to get hurt, so she gathered the crowd to turn around. When we got back, however…” _

_ “The troopers,” Marya spoke up. “Double the amount that was at the precinct; had been waiting for us, armed with blasters and clubs. Then someone yelled ‘Take back the plaza!’ And people charged. We were no match for them. They rounded up as many people they could arrest and left us in shambles.” _

  
  


Even the nights were cool. Granted, both suns weren’t out, so there’s that. Ben brought Dia a cuppa. “Thank you,” she said as she took the warm mug from his hands. The Lethan Twi’lek studied him for a moment. There was that strange feeling again.

“What is this?” she asked out loud.

“What is… what?” the human questioned. He sat down next to her. They peered out at the night sky.

“There’s this weird feeling I get when around you. Some strange familiarity. It’s almost as if we’re the same.”

He exhaled. “I’m glad you brought it up first.” A faint smile became present on his lips.

She looked at him with a creased forehead. “So you do feel it?”

“Very much so, yes.” He turned towards her as she took a sip of her drink. “Are you aware of a group of people called the Jedi?”

She nodded. “Yes. I heard that their clone army had turned on them at the end of the war.” He remained silent, so she filled the space. “I heard about them throughout my life. I heard through various stories that they were sorcerers of some kind with powerful weapons. I knew just based on observation that they were -- for the most part -- a good influence on the galaxy.”

“Yes, well…” Ben seemed to doubt himself. Whatever he would have said, he told her this instead, “We tried.”

She sat up straighter, placing her mug down. “You’re one of them?”

Without nodding, he confirmed, “Yes. I was.” He took in the amazement and delight in her features. “And if you were picked up when you were a youngling, you would have been too.”

Dia peered at him with puzzlement before getting the picture. “You mean, this power that I have it-”

“It’s something that all Jedi have, yes.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Certain people, like ourselves, have enough awareness of it so that we can tap into it.”

The Lethan sat back for a moment, taking everything in. “I’ve lived my entire life not knowing what this was.” She absentmindedly made the mug float. “I taught myself how to use it, though now I’m sure I haven’t been using it properly. Yet always around the corner, I’ve felt this cold, darkness.”

“That would be the dark side of the Force. Sith generally uses that side while the Jedi used the Light.”

Something almost caught her off guard. “You utilized the word ‘use’ in two different tenses. I can only assume that the Jedi really are no more, and the Sith are thriving.”

“You would be correct in that assumption,” Ben sighed.

Dia almost didn’t want to ask this. After all, she didn’t want to intrude. “Would it be alright if I stayed here? I could help with the moisture vaporator and things around the house. And maybe you could tell me more about the Force.”

Ben didn’t need any help, but he would like to have company. “Alright, you can stay.”

She smiled and hugged him on impulse. “Thank you.”

_ The second night (The speech would happen tomorrow), the protest leaders got up on a stand-alone wall to address the people. Word had reached us that the Jedi had been slaughtered by the Clones when the war ended. A lot of us were beyond mad about it, even Saw. _

_ Some kid was climbing a monolith. Stormtroopers who were monitoring us forcefully grabbed him and pulled him down. Someone else tried to get the troopers off of him but only got bludgeoned in the process. She can’t exactly remember what was said, but then people began attacking the troopers. The plaza erupted into chaos. _

_ Suddenly, there were eleven of us running through the streets trying to evade the brutality of the Stormtroopers. Saw took Dia by the hand and led me somewhere.  _

_ “Hide, here,” he told me. _

_ The Twi’lek looked at him with shocked eyes. “No, Saw, I can’t just hide somewhere while people are getting hurt.” _

_ “And what if you get hurt in the process, huh?! What if I lose you?” _

_ Oh. Ohhh, she realized. This man had an attachment to her. _

_ Garbled voices coming from a comm interrupted us. He kissed her forehead before running off. That caught the attention of a bunch of troopers. They chased him away.  _

_ Just as Dia was about to walk the other direction in the alleyway, she heard a gruff voice call out to her. “Stop right there!” It was one of the stormtroopers. He held a gun up to her head.  _

_ With a wave of her hand, she stated, “You do not need to take me in. You’re going to leave me alone.” _

_ “I am going to leave you alone,” the trooper repeated in a monotone voice. _

_ Feeling through the atmosphere, she found that the troopers have already captured her friends. _

For the first few months of living on this desert planet, Dia Torr hated herself. Why didn’t she go back for her comrades? Why didn’t she stay and fight? Why did she run? It was this kind of thinking that made her disillusioned enough to crash a speeder into a dealership. Yet, something told her that if she didn’t crash into that place, Ben might not have picked up on her. Or maybe he would have some other way. In the end, does it matter? She’s going to finally understand who she is and what this power of hers is. Is that so wrong?


End file.
